AudioJungle licences for Advertising should change now...

AudioJungle has great potential. However, paying $14 for music to be used for advertising is devaluing the composing industry and yourselves. Seriously.
I buy some music from AudioJungle but not for advertising purposes. Some tracks are great and good enough, but the fee is terrible and unfair. [link removed] Obviously geographic locations might have their different rates. These rates are for the UK.
If you agree to $14 instead of £8,500 then this is the most likely outcome…
1) advertising agencies will view you as the cheap guy, and will be reluctant to pay you the proper rates for advertising music in the future;
2) composers who charge proper rates are at risk of losing out to cheap guys who want to give away their music to ‘get a good name on their CV’. (You’ll most likely not get a good name for yourself, see below…)

From advertising perspectives and the perspective of established composers, this is the reality. Business and economics dictates: “why should I spend lots of money, when this other composer is selling a quality and suitable track for $14?”

Have a look at the rate card. Why are fees valued at this way? Because, the value of advertising is huge. It pulls in customers, provides your front-end company image and helps you make lots of money from you product. If you were a sales employee hired by a company, would you say “ok, don’t pay me, because I want to have this great company name on my CV?”. What if you have children to feed, a house and mortgage, medical bills etc. Now think whether $14 for an advert shown on all broadcast mediums, which may add millions to the tunrover of a company, is a good deal. Tell you opinion to the composer who just lost out to a $14 worth composer, and is now worrying about putting food on the table for his family.

Don’t fall in to the trap of selling yourself short for the sake of “establishing a name for yourself/building your CV”. If a company thinks your music is good enough for their product on national television, they will pay the proper rate, whether you are a newcomer or established composer. If the music’s good enough, and fits, that is what matters. And that is why (if your music is great and fits) you can land a national television advert with your first placement. It happens and is fact.
Composers must stick together and support each other. I know of composers who are blacklisted by other composer circles and publishers, because they are known to have sold cheaply on royalty free sites. I don’t think this should be the direction that royalty free sites takes. But it is happening. I know 1 composer who was so worried about this, he left AudioJungle sadly.

Envato: on behalf of all the quality authors on AudioJungle, the composers in the world and fairness, please alter the licensing to reflect advertising rates. The advertising money is budgeted for creative elements such as music and visuals by companies anyway. Would you rather it went towards fat cat bonuses or to the hard working composers and creators, who just helped the company earn lots of money?

@Cstudio23, it’s interesting that you’re saying this as someone who purchases music here, it certainly shows that there are some decent people out there who care for the industry its authours even if they are a customer. I appreciate that a lot.

I have serious concerns with the lack of self-respect many composers have for themselves here and in general when it comes to valuing the work they do. Like you say, offerring tracks for advertising and other normally high-paying uses for disproportionately low fees devalues not only the composing industry from a financial perspective, but also from one of credibility. It’s a massive middle finger to those who work hard their entire life honing their skills and becoming professionals. Selling cheap devalues everything they do too by association.

When it comes to extended licences, it really is the equivalent of Poundland here (I have no issue with regular licences, that makes music available to most people which is fair). I don’t sell my extended licences (for commercial usage) anymore, I negotiate them myself as every composer should for the future of the profession and for my own future. The decline of professional composers as a group will be massive if individual composers don’t change their mentality around this, it really is destroying the industry.

By the way, while getting a credit from a big company is great for your showreel, it doesn’t mean anything if people associate you with a lower tier of composers who charge nothing for their craft. In fact, I’d even argue it harms you as it categorises you as ‘cheap’ and certainly doesn’t guarantee you any future work – I know, as I’ve had various placements with big brands in the past and having worked in the advertising industry for while, I know that NOTHING is guaranteed.

That said, I don’t take anything away from those of you who do get placements with your music with big companies, I just agree with Cstudio23 that you shouldn’t be devaluing your work so that corporations pocket all the profit for your hard work.

Cstudio23 said
AudioJungle has great potential. However, paying $14 for music to be used for advertising is devaluing the composing industry and yourselves. Seriously.
I buy some music from AudioJungle but not for advertising purposes. Some tracks are great and good enough, but the fee is terrible and unfair. [link removed] Obviously geographic locations might have their different rates. These rates are for the UK.
If you agree to $14 instead of £8,500 then this is the most likely outcome…
1) advertising agencies will view you as the cheap guy, and will be reluctant to pay you the proper rates for advertising music in the future;
2) composers who charge proper rates are at risk of losing out to cheap guys who want to give away their music to ‘get a good name on their CV’. (You’ll most likely not get a good name for yourself, see below…)

From advertising perspectives and the perspective of established composers, this is the reality. Business and economics dictates: “why should I spend lots of money, when this other composer is selling a quality and suitable track for $14?”

Have a look at the rate card. Why are fees valued at this way? Because, the value of advertising is huge. It pulls in customers, provides your front-end company image and helps you make lots of money from you product. If you were a sales employee hired by a company, would you say “ok, don’t pay me, because I want to have this great company name on my CV?”. What if you have children to feed, a house and mortgage, medical bills etc. Now think whether $14 for an advert shown on all broadcast mediums, which may add millions to the tunrover of a company, is a good deal. Tell you opinion to the composer who just lost out to a $14 worth composer, and is now worrying about putting food on the table for his family.

Don’t fall in to the trap of selling yourself short for the sake of “establishing a name for yourself/building your CV”. If a company thinks your music is good enough for their product on national television, they will pay the proper rate, whether you are a newcomer or established composer. If the music’s good enough, and fits, that is what matters. And that is why (if your music is great and fits) you can land a national television advert with your first placement. It happens and is fact.
Composers must stick together and support each other. I know of composers who are blacklisted by other composer circles and publishers, because they are known to have sold cheaply on royalty free sites. I don’t think this should be the direction that royalty free sites takes. But it is happening. I know 1 composer who was so worried about this, he left AudioJungle sadly.

Envato: on behalf of all the quality authors on AudioJungle, the composers in the world and fairness, please alter the licensing to reflect advertising rates. The advertising money is budgeted for creative elements such as music and visuals by companies anyway. Would you rather it went towards fat cat bonuses or to the hard working composers and creators, who just helped the company earn lots of money?

Completely agree. There has been lots of discussion recently about this. I imagine the folks who made Audiojungle did not have a clue about the music business. I hope they are working this out but, as far as I know, any plans to make changes to licensing terms have not been addressed on the forums, or any other communication.

If they are working on it, I’m not sure what is taking so long. Research other similar sites that have fair licensing terms, use those findings to base yours off of, finalize and be done with it. Don’t want to research other sites? Try researching the rates of the UK’s MCPS:

I know I’m generalizing, but the information about how to have fair, competitive licensing is out there. If AJ isn’t interested in creating new licensing terms, they should at least put limits on the terms that are in place and anything outside of that can be directly negotiated with the composer.

Yup, I agree too. The issue here has NEVER been about price, it’s about flexibility of licensing. There are lots of threads that deal with the same issue.

People who are OK with the prices and the current licensing situation on Audiojungle really need to do a little research on the industry and what people are actually paying at broadcast level (not to mention other royalty-free websites).

Cstudio23 said
AudioJungle has great potential. However, paying $14 for music to be used for advertising is devaluing the composing industry and yourselves. Seriously.
I buy some music from AudioJungle but not for advertising purposes. Some tracks are great and good enough, but the fee is terrible and unfair. [link removed] Obviously geographic locations might have their different rates. These rates are for the UK.
If you agree to $14 instead of £8,500 then this is the most likely outcome…
1) advertising agencies will view you as the cheap guy, and will be reluctant to pay you the proper rates for advertising music in the future;
2) composers who charge proper rates are at risk of losing out to cheap guys who want to give away their music to ‘get a good name on their CV’. (You’ll most likely not get a good name for yourself, see below…)

From advertising perspectives and the perspective of established composers, this is the reality. Business and economics dictates: “why should I spend lots of money, when this other composer is selling a quality and suitable track for $14?”

.......

It’s ridiculous to have a $14/$70 track used for broadcast.

Okay, here are my thoughts on this:

When I first started on Audiojungle about a year ago, I honestly didnt care much about licensing and I guess I’m not mistaken in assuming that most of the newer authors dont have a clue about licensing in the RFM business either.
When I started here, I was simply happy that someone bought my music and if it would have been a big company like in recent events that initiated this thread, I would have felt proud and happy like the new author that sold the track.
Well these times have changed. When people asked me in during the last year how much I would get for let’s say, selling Sony a track for a viral YouTube campaign, I always told them about an EXTENDED license, and now I realized it was wishful thinking on my side, Sony can obviously do this with a Standard license for $14,- Dollars.
How can I live with this? Turns out, I really cant. One year later, I would feel embarrassed and ashamed to tell anybody that all I got out of such a deal is 4,62 as a Non Exclusive author or $7,- as a exclusive (which I was til October).
My second hope, that the big companies like the ones we’re talking about here, would have the decency NOT to buy here then for such purposes (luckily there’s still the fact that many big companies dont buy here because they simply cant believe this kind of licensing to be real!!) and leave the marketplace to the clientel I always thought it was made for ….well this hope is getting shattered too with incidents like this.
But yeah, where do you draw the line? You cannot say to Sony or Toyota or Porsche: hey, you have too much money to buy music here…..

Envato/Audiojungle until now always used to bring in the argument, that the number of possible sales makes up for the cheap licensing.
Yes, it obviously does, but only for a really small number of authors. The rest is getting lured into thinking that they also are going to have the next “hit”. It simply takes a calculator and the notion of the fact, that AJ grew from about 30.000 tracks in January 2012 when I started here to now about 85.000 tracks.
Still, nothing wrong with it. Or is something wrong with it?
Fact is, if I had a bestseller right now I probably wouldnt write these lines here. That’s how the system works… not only here, on AJ. If tomorrow a successful VH author would chose one of my items, that could turn me into a profiteer of the way this site works immediately. Would I complain? No, of course not. But this still wouldnt change the nature of this game, that with this kind of licensing, is threatening to devalue music in the long run, create a drain of more and more people thinking ‘ah, now we have this great video with actor XX whom we paid xxxxx,- dollars, now we need some music for it, ah, well, lets go to AJ and get some track for $14,- and we’re done’.

Conclusion:
I have no problems to sell my music for $14,- as long as the proportions/conditions are ok for customer and author. But here, some things are clearly out of proportion.
And if Envato/AJ is not sending the signal via updating their licensing terms, then we/I have to do it as an author/authors: Don’t expect to get my best work for THIS KIND OF USE for $14,- dollars!